WarpConduit Computing

How to Bookmark your Facebook News Feed

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Recently Facebook underwent some design changes, now whenever you login to Facebook you are dropped on the Welcome page. Also if you are already logged in and go to http://www.facebook.com it also drops you on the Welcome page.

But when you click on the link for News Feed the URL registers as http://www.facebook.com. But for those of us who prefer the News Feed when going to the normal Facebook URL this is annoying, and I’ve found no help or settings that allows me to choose the default section that Facebook will initially load.

So after some messing around i found that the URL for the actual Facebook News Feed:

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf

Just click that link once you’re logged in to Facebook, bookmark the page, and you’ll be able to go directly to your News Feed using that bookmark; that is unless Facebook makes changes rendering this method useless.

It works for me, hope that information helps someone else.

Prevent Windows Update from Automatically Rebooting Your PC

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In Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 your computer may automatically install Window’s Updates and then restart.  Follow one of the methods below to disable this behavior.  These instructions are for computer experts only.

Method 1

  1. Run gpedit.msc
  2. Go to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update
  3. Double-click on “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Update installation”
  4. Enable it, click OK and close the Group Policy Editor
  5. Reboot

Method 2

If you don’t have gpedit.msc, use the following instructions.

  1. Run regedit.exe
  2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
    Note: You will need to create the WindowsUpdate and AU keys if they are missing.
  3. Create a new 32-bit DWORD value inside of WindowsUpdate\AU and name it NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers
  4. Double-click on your newly created value and give it a value data of 1 (hexadecimal)
  5. Click OK and close Registry Editor

APT Repository for Old Ubuntu Releases

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Recently I installed Ubuntu Server 6.06 (Dapper) on an old Sun Blade 100 which has a SPARC processor. The installation on a Sun Blade 100 has its own quirks, but after getting it up and running I of course wanted to make sure it had the latest software versions and security updates that it could support.

Problem

After support for an old Ubuntu releases has been dropped the folks at Canonical remove the repositories from their main repository servers such as archive.ubuntu.com and security.ubuntu.com. So, when you run sudo apt-get update you are met with a list of errors telling you that the your configured repositories were not found.

Solution

To get back on the repository train, edit your /etc/apt/sources.list and replace all instances of archive.ubuntu.com and security.ubuntu.com with the very fitting old-releases.ubuntu.com. After that, run sudo apt-get update and watch the repository indexes roll in!

Here is an example of an updated /etc/apt/sources.list for Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper):


## Uncomment the following two lines to fetch updated software from the network
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted

## Uncomment the following two lines to fetch major bug fix updates produced
## after the final release of the distribution.
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper multiverse

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse

That’s it for today, I hope this has helped you get the software you need onto an old Ubuntu installation.

Interesting UNIX Time Stamps

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For your reading pleasure, some interesting UNIX time stamps:

0 – UNIX Time Begins – Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT/UTC
2147483647 – Last 32-bit SIGNED INT – Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT/UTC
4294967295 – Last 32-bit UNSIGNED INT – Sun, 07 Feb 2106 06:28:15 GMT/UTC
9999999999 – Last INT(10) – Sat, 20 Nov 2286 17:46:39 GMT/UTC
99999999999 – Last INT(11) – Wed, 16 Nov 5138 09:46:39 GMT/UTC
999999999999 – Last INT(12) – Fri, 27 Sep 33658 01:46:39 GMT/UTC

UNIX time stamps converted using OnlineConversion.com.